HOWTO: Dropping Papers

I don't know how hard it was before the Internet Age, but AFPC has recently made it drop-dead simple to "drop papers."

STEP 1: ON-LINE RETIREMENT ELIGIBILITY CHECK

Go to the vMPF. Click on "Self-Service Actions" and then "Retirement". One of your menu choices will then be "Retirement Elgibility Check." On that page, you'll be asked what year and month you'd like to retire on (all retirements are effective on the first of the month). Once you submit the form, AFPC will check to see if you're eligible to retire on that date (i.e. do you have 20 years, etc), and whether any waivers will be required (i.e. is the retirement date less than 120 days away, are you under any assignment codes, etc). Within 5 duty days (and usually a lot sooner), they'll send you an answer via e-mail

If, for whatever reason, you decide that you don't want to retire on the requested date, you don't need to do anything. The "case" opened by submitting the Requirement Eligibility Check will be closed and go away 14 days after AFPC provides a response.

If you do want to retire, you will need to drop papers within 14 days of receiving your Retirement Eligibility Check response, or you'll have to go through this step all over again (not a big deal, really).

If, after submitting a Requirement Eligibility check but before dropping papers, you decide you want to retire on a different date, you can just let 14 days go by and start the whole process over again. If you don't want to wait 14 days (or you're on a short timeline to get out), you can just call the AFPC "Contact Center" (the DSN/commercial numbers are prominently posted on vMPF) and tell them to close your case. [Note: For those of us used to what passes for "customer service" in the military, the AFPC Contact Center is surprisingly responsive: you can call them anytime 24x7, and a real human will actually answer and help you.] The contracted civilian who answers the phone at the contact center can't close the case on his/her own authority; they have to call a guy sitting in the Retirements Branch. But it's still an easy one-phone-call transaction for you.

STEP 2: RETIREMENT APPLICATION

So, AFPC has sent you an e-mail saying that you're eligible to retire. You now have 14 days to drop papers. But no one in your unit has been notified yet, and your personnel records don't say anything about "retirement pending." So you can still back out at this point, and no one will be the wiser.

Assuming you've decided you really, really want to retire, it's now time to "drop papers." Ironically, this process is now entirely paperless. You just go pack to vMPF, click on "Self-Service Actions", then "Retirement", and then "Apply for retirement."

You'll be prompted to read and electronically acknowledge a "Pre-Retirement Counseling Checklist." This won't take you more than 5 minutes.

Then you'll get to the actual "Retirement Application." It will ask you when you want to retire, what your forwarding address will be, and what you're commander's e-mail address is. Once you click "Submit" on this form, you will have "dropped papers" and effectively ended your career. Rescinding your retirement application is not an easy or painless process; it requires AFPC approval and I'm guessing they really would rather see you gone at that point.

Before you hit "submit", you may want to let your commander know that you're planning on retiring, so it won't be a total surprise to him when the AFPC sends him an automated e-mail asking for his coordination. That e-mail will be the first time anyone in your unit gets notified by AFPC of your intention to retire.

STEP 3: WAIT

As soon as you submit your application, your commander will get an e-mail from AFPC. The commander has to respond to this e-mail before AFPC will act on the application.

In my case, the commander sat on the e-mail for over 15 days. AFPC won't forget about it, though, and will send you periodic reminders that the commander still hasn't coordinated on your application. I'm not sure if the commander also gets "reminder" e-mails.

In any case, the commander does not have the option to "disapprove" your retirement application. Though I'm guessing that they can make comments to the effect that you are mission-critical, pending court-martial, or whatever they think might sway the real approval authority: the AFPC Retirement Branch.

However, I do know that if the commander sits on the application for 30 days without action, AFPC closes the case, as if you'd never applied. I only found out about this when AFPC sent me a 14-day reminder e-mail, telling me that the commander still hadn't acted on my application.

[If anyone has more insight as to what the process looks like from the Commander's site of the desk, please comment!]

STEP 4: ORDERS!

According to buddies who have been through the process, you typically get retirement orders via e-mail about a week after your commander coordinates on your application. We'll see how that works.